Outhouse

I have been servicing and installing composting toilets for 17 years at a seasonal cottage community. Recently I installed two of the UD pedestals for a client, I was very impressed with the quality, as was my clients. The toilets are superior to any brand I've encountered, sunmar, envirolet, nature head, all use thin plastic components. These sturdy porcelain like youd fine in a real bathroom and clean better and dont stain like the plastic ones.

Love the ability to move where the waste pipe and exhaust pipe are installed on the unit, it allows for many options when installing so you can optimize the functionality of the unit. Other units you have to compromise constantly because of the hard mounted penetrations.

We are very pleased with the experience of the GL90. Everything was of good quality and mostly easy to install. The porcelain throne is very high quality and looks very nice. There is absolutely no odor. We had to turn off the power to the fan a couple of times, and there was only a faint smell of fresh pine shavings and hemp. We also inadvertently discovered that the hemp shavings are far superior to pine in the absorption factor. We see now that is explained on the website. We are temporarily using a 5 gallon plastic bottle for liquid containment until our leachate system is complete. At first we were using the supplied hemp and had little to no liquid in the bottle. When we ran out of hemp, we used some local pine shavings and noticed the bottle filled up much more quickly. I'm thinking that using hemp will allow the moisture to remain in the pile longer and allow the fan to evaporate more liquids. Hence, making for less emptying of the liquids container until leachate system and filter is installed. It did take a few return trips to town to get the 4 in vent plumbing that I could make work with supplied fittings. I would suggest giving specific instructions and materials for the type of pipe and fittings that will actually work to save people the time and effort. Fernco fittings saved the day. It was more of a challenge than I anticipated with the various 4 in pipe available on the market. AI wasn't totally accurate either because of the metric to imperial conversion. I'll post pics in the near future for reference of what worked for me. The other small details of installing the porcelain toilet: the measurements for placing the toilet mounts seemed to be a bit off and I had to screw in at an angle to get it to work. I measured several times. Also, one of the screws that secure the mounts to the floor broke as well as i was driving it in. I found a more stout screw for that. With those small details the system still rates a 5 in our experience. Service and product are exactly what we had hoped for. Thank you Nicholas.

Our GL90 is up and running; we just swapped out the container for the first time. I really love how small the composting container is, and bought an extra container in case it requires removal more often than projected.

Our situation had a number of odd wrinkles:

❖ This is an elevated house; the living area including the bathroom is 8' off the ground. The area below the house is unenclosed, so we didn't have typical space constraints.
❖ We were replacing an original "Carousel" compost toilet from the early 1980s, so we had to line the GL90 up with the original chute, and find a way to connect it to the original vent pipe.
❖ One complication is that the old Carousel was destroyed by flooding from Hurricane Milton. It was raised less than a foot above ground, and the roaring floodwaters came up about 3 feet. So wanted the replacement composting container to be elevated as high as possible. My solution was to hang it from the ceiling below the house, to avoid any structure under the container that could get washed away if we get another flood like that (even if the container itself was above the flood level).
❖ Another complication, this one self-inflicted, was that I was also reinstalling the fire sprinkler system and the water heater, both of which were also destroyed by flooding, and needed to be elevated as well -- and for various reasons needed to be in almost the exact location where the toilet needed to go, and needed to be protected from wind-driven rain.

I did have a few technical problems with the GL90:

❖ I was aware that the hose and vent fittings on the GL90 were metric, but I hadn't realized that the nominal metric sizes used in Australia are different than nominal metric sizes for hose and pipe made everywhere else in the world! After numerous false starts and then deep research, I finally figured out ways to make everything work -- but that wrinkle alone took this project way beyond the DIY world. Good thing I love a challenge, and have technical and research skills...
❖ We had a serious fly problem shortly after we began using the GL90. I still am not sure exactly why, but I did notice that the lid doesn't fit tightly on the container. The three clamps just aren't enough to keep even marginally fly-proof. My solution has been decidedly low tech: a brick on the lid between each pair of lid clamps. It's also possible that the exhaust fan is too weak; I've purchased a replacement that should move twice as much air.
❖ I still haven't figured out how to keep the toilet seat on straight. It keeps moving off center, and I'm afraid to tighten the connecting screws any further; they don't seem that robust. The brackets hold the toilet to the floor don't seem that robust either, but the toilet has stayed in place, so I don't want to argue with success (and I'm managing to avoid permanently fastening the toilet to the beautiful terra-cotta tile floor in the bathroom).